When SEMrush announced the release of its AI Toolkit, I was immediately intrigued. As someone who has spent years helping businesses optimise their SEO, content strategy, and digital presence, I know how much AI changes people’s search for information.
More and more potential customers aren’t just turning to Google—they’re asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI platforms with whom they should work. This shift made me, and many others in the digital marketing industry, wonder:
How does AI perceive my business? What does AI say about my business?
So, I decided to put SEMrush’s AI Toolkit to the test—and the insights I gained were both surprising and valuable. I tested my own business because I am confident more prominent brands will gain value from AI tools like this. Still, I wanted to see how a B2B Business, a mid-sized, local business, would do in an AI reputation assessment. Would it even be worth the time and energy spent?
Why I Decided to Run This Test
At Digitlab, we specialise in market acquisition, lead generation, and business growth. We help businesses grow by optimising their digital presences, analytics, SEO, paid media, and CRM automation strategies, mainly through platforms like HubSpot and SEMrush. While we do this for clients daily, I wanted to take a step back and analyse our position based on how AI is critiquing the data it has to assess. Let’s face it: this is becoming increasingly important in customer decision-making, so it’s worth knowing.
With AI-driven search becoming more prevalent, potential customers are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI platforms who they should work with and what they think of products. I was fascinated by the idea that with the SEMRush AI Toolkit we may gain some insight into what AI thinks and how people use this ‘little black box.”
I think it’s essential to understand how SEMRush gets this data and how they draw the insight because that ultimately determines how much we can trust it and what we can or should do with it.
How SEMrush’s AI Toolkit Works
Before diving into what I discovered, let me explain how this tool works.
It Collects AI Queries
SEMrush has a massive database of queries that people ask AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. It identifies any queries that mention your brand, whether by name or in a relevant context.
It Runs These Queries Through AI Platforms
The tool feeds these relevant queries into multiple AI systems to analyse how my brand is referenced in their responses. This helps track where the brands are mentioned, in what context, and alongside which competitors.
It Generates Reports on My AI Presence
The toolkit then compiles detailed reports on three key areas:
- Business Landscape – Where we stand in the competitive space.
- Brand & Marketing – How AI describes us and what attributes are associated with Digitlab.
- Audience & Content – The key themes AI associates with us and what people are searching for.
It Provides Actionable Recommendations
Beyond just tracking mentions, the tool also gives strategic insights on how to improve our AI-driven presence.
Here’s what I discovered about how AI platforms describe Digitlab, how our brand is positioned in AI-driven search, and what this means for the future of marketing.
What the SEMRush AI Toolkit Taught Me About My Business
1. AI Recommends Digitlab to SMEs and Startups
One of the biggest revelations was that AI platforms already recognise Digitlab as a trusted resource for SMEs and startups in digital marketing. A few clients told me they found us by asking ChatGPT who they should work with for digital marketing—and AI recommended us.
This means our work in building thought leadership, sales collateral, and case studies is paying off unexpectedly. AI-driven queries are already creating leads for us, and they are doing so on the same criteria as sound SEO principles, which is good news for people following good content-driven SEO.
2. Our Lack of a Global Presence Is Noted (But That’s Not Necessarily a Bad Thing)
AI sees our limited global presence as a potential weakness. This was an interesting perspective because while we operate in an international space and serve a lot of global clients in the USA, Switzerland, New Zealand and other countries, we don’t explicitly portray this online through office location (because we’re a virtual business) and content, it does not come across.
What this tells me is that branding is all about intent. AI highlights a gap we need to fill if our vision is to become a global player. But if our goal is to be the go-to consultancy for digital marketing in Africa, our current strategy aligns well.
3. Our Brand Sentiment Score: 89.3% Positive
SEMrush’s AI Toolkit assigns a positive rating based on how AI platforms describe your business. Digitlab scored an 89.3% positivity rating, with the remaining percentage being neutral.
This was a reassuring sign that our content strategy, reputation management, and digital PR efforts are working. If AI perceives our brand positively, it’s a good indication that customers searching for us do too.
4. AI Is Fact-Checking Us (And So Are Our Prospects)
This one caught my attention.
People are asking AI whether Digitlab can deliver on the promises we make in our proposals.
And how does AI answer? Pulling in our case studies, online reviews, and existing third-party content to validate its response.
This reinforces something I’ve always believed—content is the backbone of any good marketing strategy. If AI acts as a verification tool, businesses can’t just focus on technical SEO, backlinks, and blogging.
To win in AI-driven search, you need robust case studies, review management, PR, social media presence, and thought leadership content that proves you can deliver.
5. We’ve Been Directly Compared to Larger Global Agencies
One interesting query I found was a direct competitive comparison between Digitlab and a more prominent global agency. I ran the same query out of curiosity, and the results were interesting.
AI pulled information directly from the respective businesses’ content and case studies to explain how each company differs. This means that our ability to control our narrative is directly tied to how much effort we put into content marketing.
I’m glad the response felt accurate and fair, which means whoever ran that query got the correct information to decide (Hopefully, they chose us. 😉.)
6. AI Recognises Our Strengths Based on Content (Not Just What We Put Front and Centre)
According to the toolkit, AI platforms describe Digitlab’s strengths as:
- Comprehensive Services
- Expertise & Experience
- Digital Strategy
- Content-Driven Approach
- Digital Transformation
What’s important to note is that this wasn’t pulled just from our primary website navigation (the content we put front and centre —it came from all the content we’ve created across different platforms and content deeper in our blog and on other press websites.
This will become important for companies wanting to pivot their service offering or deal with online perception issues. AI tends to go much deeper than Google Search in answers, and it may be more challenging to shift.
7. SEMrush’s AI Toolkit Provides Actionable Content Strategies
Beyond insights, the tool also suggested short, mid, and long-term content plans to improve our AI visibility. These recommendations aligned nicely with SEO, social media, and our sales collateral, making implementation easy.
I liked this because it helped push content strategy beyond the norm.
8. A Multi-Channel Presence Matters More Than Ever
Many of the toolkit’s recommendations focused on expanding our multi-channel marketing strategy to strengthen brand recognition across AI, search, and social media. AI platforms don’t just look at a website—they analyse everything from social posts to reviews, interviews and guest articles.
9. Invest in big Content Projects
One of our most significant projects, Insight 2025: The State of Digital, has positioned Digitlab as a credible source for digital business and marketing trends in AI search.
This proves that significant content investments pay off. If you want to be known for something, create high-quality, original content that sets you apart.
Final Thoughts: Why This Matters for the Future of Marketing
I learned from this exercise that AI-driven search influences customer decisions (ok, I already knew this, but finally, we have the data to show us how) —whether businesses are paying attention.
For Digitlab, this reinforces why SEO isn’t just about rankings. It’s about reputation management, brand positioning, and content strategy across multiple channels.
I found a few extra golden nuggets in my analysis, but I’ll keep those as my competitive edge. 😉
If you’re curious about how your business shows up, let’s chat.
